The Potteries Post – From the city of Stoke-on-Trent and beyond, news you can use. Not much local creative / eco news at present, as we’re moving into sleepy August, but there’s still a smattering to be had. The Post will be in “slow mode” for August, and back in early September.
Currently on eBay, not from me, ’63 by Liam Hanley (1933-2019). 1963 somewhere in the Potteries, probably based on a real view. I’ve rectified, fixed some paint cracking and the colour cast.
Sad to hear about the Falcon Works fire at the back of the London Road in Stoke town. As far as I know it’s been derelict since at least the mid 1990s, so, really… what can you expect after thirty years? These things have to be either i) properly re-used within 15 years; ii) totally and deliberately abandoned to nature as an eco-ruin, probably with floors removed and other measures to prevent it becoming a haven for druggies; iii) shipped off brick-by-brick for reconstruction at the Black Country Museum; or iv) the site cleared with the intention of building on it in a few decades’ time.
An abandoned cobalt mine on Alderley Edge, rediscovered. Apparently un-vandalised and…
“in pristine condition, together with […] personal objects and inscriptions”
It was mined in “the early 19th century because of the Napoleonic Wars”. In peacetime conditions the ‘zaffre’ type of cobalt could be imported annually to the UK from Saxony and Prussia (now Germany / Poland). Then used in certain types of glaze mixes (for ‘cobalt blues’ etc) by the pottery industry, in a highly diluted form at 1:150,000. The Alderley Edge mine reported today is said to have been abandoned in 1810, no longer needed.
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery has a thoughtful blog post on Anglo-Saxon jewellers of the Peak, spurred by a new find near Tissington (above Ashbourne). The article also discusses several early Victorian finds that found their way across to collections in Sheffield rather than to Buxton. The White Peak, the article states, has…
“the greatest collection of 7th century Anglo-Saxon monumental burials in the Midlands, and particularly around the village of Tissington. Although it has been fashionable to view these burials as representative of the elite of a very local community, another theory is that the zone may have been used as a kind of “valley of the kings” for a wider regional elite.”
The railway operator Avanti West Coast has the first details of their ‘from December 2022’ timetable. There’s a hint in the Express and Star newspaper coverage today (talking about Staffordshire connections with Scotland and the North Wales coast) and also in Avanti’s official advance brochure, that North Wales — and perhaps even the resort of Llandudno town — might be better and more directly served…
“more trains running to … Llandudno from December 2022. Watch this space.”
Although that might just mean to direct-from-Liverpool, something the local politicians have long been pressing for.
At present, getting to Llandudno town from Stoke-on-Trent involves three hours and two changes, on one of two routes…
Route 1: Stoke – Crewe – Chester – Llandudno Town. (The latter section is the Manchester Airport to Llandudno service, and as such may be crowded and luggage-heavy).
Route 2: Stoke – Crewe – Llandudno Junction – Llandudno Town.
Those down in Wolverhampton, rather than Stoke, used to be luckier. They could just hop on a direct train, no changes. That was the Birmingham International airport to Holyhead boat-train, via leafy Shropshire to Chester and then Holyhead for the boat to Ireland. It took the same time to Llandudno Town as from Stoke, three hours from Wolverhampton.
In the 1990s this boat-train service was a great throbbing heavy diesel to Holyhead, with old 1950s carriages that had proper sprung seats and good old-fashioned slide-down wooden windows. Wonderful. You wouldn’t have been surprised to see Will Hay walking along the platform at Wolverhampton, tapping the carriage wheels.
The sensible slide-down windows meant you could get the sea-air in, as the train began to hug the North Wales coastline, and you didn’t suffocate on a sunny day. It was a great journey, albeit with an icky bit for 20 minutes as the Telford-to-Shrewsbury commuters piled in. But fine after that.
Sadly I’m not sure if the Birmingham – Holyhead train calls at Llandudno Town anymore. The above timetable site says “yes” via Arriva, but it may well be out-of-date. Since another and seemingly more reliable timetable site says “no”, the service now just calls at the Junction.
It gives the same for all the Birmingham – Holyhead service times. The service appears to take no once-a-day shunt into Llandudno Town. A little digging finds a press report which suggests the connection was lost in 2021 due to the lockdowns, along with the loss of the direct London – North Wales service. Some ‘Levelling Up’ needed there, I’d suggest.
So there’s no ‘via Wolverhampton’ option any more (unless Avanti West Coast find a way, from Dec 2022) and it’s thus a toss-up, if travelling from Stoke. Route 1 risks running into heavy baggage/crowding and wafting overseas viruses on the Manchester Airport to Llandudno service, but is cheaper (I suspect the airport service is subsided by the Tourist Board). Route 2 means you’d have to endure a change at Llandudno Junction and then the short hop into the seaside town on a local Welsh shuttle, and is also twice the price and gets you there later — the station is a bit of a 10-12 minute walk from the sea-front and you wouldn’t be walking onto the Promenade and looking at the sea until noon.
Incidentally, searching Google for direct train service to llandudno shows just how useless all the robo-writing AIs are. Three pages of useless robo-pages to get past in the results, before you can find something written by a human and thus useful. The local Tourist Board could usefully work on getting a human-written page up top. The problem then would be to keep the information on it timely. But it would surely be worth £1,000 a year to pay a train enthusiast to maintain it by hand.
Peter Blake – Under Milk Wood. Over 150 watercolours and collages by the seminal British pop artist, illustrating and evoking the famous play by Dylan Thomas. On show in Cork Street, London, until 23rd July 2022.
Joseph Chittenden shows how the British town of Colchester would have appeared, during its time as a city under the Roman Empire. Roman Colchester is seen in his digital 3D reconstruction, including key events such as… “the attack by Boudica and her 120,000 followers”. He’s packaged the renders into a nice little pocket Guide Book for tourists, available now.
Currently new on eBay today (not from me) a Jack Simcock oil painting from the Potteries.
New this week, on The Potteries Post.
